WhatsApp rolls out voice note transcription feature to more users

The interesting voice message transcription feature on WhatsApp has finally been made available to more users on iOS, WABetaInfo reported.

The feature was previously available to some beta testers on iOS, but now it has been released for more users with the version update to 23.25.10.70.

“Finally, it appears that WhatsApp is rolling out the ability to transcribe voice messages to additional users who install the most updated version of the app,” the WhatsApp news tracker said.

This screenshot from the announcement of the feature for beta testers will show how the new feature would work.

As seen in the screenshot, the transcription is added to the message bubble as a voice note has been sent.

As per WABetaInfo, the feature is enabled by default but in case you do not want your voice messages being transcribed for some reason, you can disable the feature by visiting WhatsApp Settings > Chats > Voice Message Transcripts.

“Note that this feature always preserves end-to-end encryption as the transcription process takes place locally on the user’s device, by using language packs,” an earlier article about the availability for the beta testers stated.

“For this reason, the ability to transcribe messages is only available for some users on newer versions of iOS, as it uses the latest APIs provided by iOS 16 that allow the app to process the voice message locally on the user’s device, without the need to transfer the message to external servers.”

The transcription feature also allows users to search for information within the message as when the voice note is transcribed, the text is indexed, making it searchable.

“The ability to transcribe voice notes is available for some beta testers that install the latest version of WhatsApp beta for iOS from the TestFlight app, and it is rolling out to even more people over the coming weeks.”